The true meaning of Spira
by Takhira
Summary: Seymour will be visited by three spirits...who will regret it.
1. Chapter 1

It was a cold and blustery day. It was a day where one learns the true meaning of 'white' as it falls from more white, with a picturesque backdrop of white, onto—you guessed it—more white.

Considering this was in Macalania, this rated a negative eighteen on a scale of one to ten of weirdness.

And yet, there was something colder, far colder, but not quite as white. Its temperature would make dry ice think itself in the tropics (it should be noted that it is quite difficult to confuse things in gaseous states, though not impossible). The native creatures that inhabited this rather monochromatic environment would take one look at the thing, panic, and turn the other way, purely in fear of frostbite from it.

This thing, so cold, so bleak, so poetically described, yet not yet alluded to what it actually is in the slightest is Seymour, or to be more precise, his heart. He, himself, is colorful and warm, proven by his breath making funny white puffs in front of his nose, adding yet another whiteness to his view of the place.

At this point in the story, although it has yet to start, it should be noted that his heart is cold and bleak, as said above. It is not to be confused with something smaller than it should be, which is a biological impossibility for him to be alive (and he is, at least for now), belongs to another person, of another species, in entirely another story, written by another author.

"S-s-s-s-s-i-i-i-i-i-i-r-r-r-r?" one of the few guards that followed him asked. There had been several guards with him before, but most of them had left, determined to keep all their limbs and the last of their sanity and noticed that Seymour was paying as much attention to them as he did the stitching of someone else's pants. He wouldn't care if they wandered off in search of a hot cup of coffee and a new job. Their job was to protect him, but considering Seymour, the only things there were to keep him from were low doorways and people insisting that no matter what he did, or what his argument to the contrary was, he couldn't possibly be dutiful enough to Yevon without giving them a considerable amount of money. Both of these were usually dealt with, with a small fireball and a few flashy hand movements. Or possibly a few flashy hand movements colliding with someone's skull. The real mystery of the guards was why there were any left, especially following him where you would only be assaulted if you had a space heater with you.

"Yes?" Seymour asked, cheerfully. He liked the weather, despite the fact that the wind was at what people classified as a gale, and the road was what people classified it as 'not there anymore,' and anyone wandering around in such weather would be classified as several things, all of them not repeatable without changing the rating of the story.

"I-i-i-i-s-s I-I-I-I-t-t-t-t p-p-p-p-o"

"By the time you finish your sentence, we'll both have forgotten what the first word was," Seymour said. He didn't bother mentioning that it would be better to ask once they were inside because he frankly didn't care. He never cared for small talk, and barely cared for big talk. He considered making it a rule that guards would be silent, but their vocal chords came in handy by chiming in at precisely the right time to yell 'duck!'

The good thing about the temple-other than the central heating system—was that it was so extremely brightly colored that not even the priests denied the rumor that it had been painted by someone who had smoked several strange herbal mixtures at once and came equipped with a spell that kept the paint from freezing. The bad thing was that in usual weather—and anything worse—it was still completely invisible until you had bashed your nose right into it.

Or your hair, in Seymour's case.

Instead of saying anything obvious, and also polite, he let the few remaining guards walk right into the wall of the temple.

Seymour, not caring if they're noses were damaged by the crash or the cold enough to have fallen off and gotten lost in the snow, merely reached for the doorknob. He saw nothing else to do, really.

Just as his nails were a hair's width away from the knob, a chill was sent down his spine. The guards, cold and freezing as they were, even those miles away having deserted a long time ago and waiting for him to return to a place where molecules actually moved, were competent. However, his expression of sudden shock and terror only left them bewildered. And they all wondered silently, what was so bad about a doorknob, one he'd used so many times before?

It wasn't the doorknob, at leas not yet, that had disturbed him. Everyone who'd met Seymour swore he heard voices. Most assumed they sounded sickly-sweet and comforting and explained to him why things should be set one fire, or why it would improve the world's economy by hiding Maester Mika's shoes. This voice, however, had other ideas.

"Seymour…" it spoke, making sure it was haunting the right person.

"D-dad?" Seymour asked, though he was unaware his mouth was moving.

"Who else do I sound like, dimwit?"

"No one. Especially not now," Seymour answered. This time he was damn sure he wasn't actually talking. Usually he kept his smarmy comments to himself.

"I heard that!" the voice said.

"What are you gonna do? Ground me?" Seymour heard his own voice say. Suddenly he went whiter than Macalania's record for whiteness, which only confused the guards more, and exasperated them greatly, for two out of three had to pee. Seymour quickly regained his composure, but lost it just as easily when the color came back to him, and he started screaming and waving a fist at nothing in particular. "You are not allowed inside my head! Get out right now or—"

"Or what?" Jyscal's voice asked. "Or you'll tell you're mother?"

Seymour's mental voice growled like a machina with a broken fan belt.

"Oo, scary."

Seymour paused. Before figured out why he was having this conversation, he had to gain control of it. "Is there some point to all this?" he wondered.

"Yes."

"And are you going to tell me what exactly that is?"

"Oh, fine," his father's voice said, disappointed that he'd been backed into a corner so easily. He wanted to get more out of Seymour, such as an explanation about a window, which had broken four years ago.

"Well, get on with it," Seymour demanded.

"I was getting there!" Jyscal yelled. "I am here—well, I'm not really here am I? You solved that, didn't you?"

"Shut up or I remember puberty at you!" Seymour mentally shouted.

"Right then, on with it. I'm warning you that tonight you will be visited by three spirits…at least that's what I was told they were…"

There was a long mental pause.

"Why?" Seymour asked.

"…" Jyscal said. "…I lost a bet and I got to be the one t tell you."

"No, I mean why bother telling me? They're gonna show up and I can just throw a chair or a fireball at them. I mean, 'look out, there's a pit in front of you' is something to warn me about."

"Look, I did my job, I'm leaving, and I never want in your head again, goodbye!" Jyscal shouted, and reality slammed right into Seymour with such force that it was audible for miles.

"What was all that about?" Seymour voiced and opened the door to the temple, only to be trampled by three desperate guards before his hand left the knob.


	2. Chapter 2

"What do you mean you want a raise?" Seymour asked.

"Well, we DID walk for six hours in the snow," the now-thawed guard commented

"And so did I, but you don't see me asking for more money," Seymour retorted.

"That would be because you have it already," another guard said.

"Sir, we have families," the third said.

"I don't see why you reproducing has anything to do with me," Seymour said.

"I'm actually quite glad that it doesn't, but—"

The guard was interrupted by a banging on the door, the type of banging made by someone who has nothing better to do than annoy others (actually they have several better things to do, they just aren't willing to do anything else).

Seymour opened the door, shouted "We don't want any!" and slammed the door closed without even taking note of whether there was someone in front of it or not.

The banging started again.

"Yes?" Seymour more demanded than asked, opening the door again.

"Hi," Tidus said, in a manner that showed he assumed he was important and he wasn't leaving until someone said he was.

"Do you want something?" Seymour asked.

"Would I be here if I didn't?" Tidus asked.

"Well, what is it?" Seymour asked.

"What is what?"

"What is it that you want, other than for me to hold the door open and let a pile of snow accumulate on an expensive rug?"

"But it looks like all the other rugs in Spira," Tidus said. "I'm here for money."

"Someone's paying you to stand on the doorstep of Macalania temple and bug me?"

"No, I'm asking for money."

"No, that would require a statement with a question mark. Why exactly would you need money?"

"Well, you see—"

"Are you or your family starving?"

"Well, no."

"Do you have expensive medical bills to pay off?"

"No."

"Homeless?"

"No."

"Student loans?"

"Not really. None of us went to school."

"Well, then maybe you should so you can get a job of your own. What exactly do you need money for anyway? Everyone knows every monster caries at least enough for Chocobo fare."

"…We're trying to get an ultimate weapon."

"Now, how does that interest me?"

"Why does that matter?"

"Why would I give money to someone? I'm not improving anyone's welfare, I'm not helping a young adult learn enough to achieve a place in the business world and help the economy, all I'm doing is giving someone I don't know something big and pointy? I'm a Maester, I'm supposed to be concerned with Spira's future. I don't think it's a good future to waste money on pointy objects and give them to just anyone."

"You could just pretend to be concerned with Spira's future, like the other Maesters," Tidus suggested.

"You've asked the other Maesters for money?" Seymour asked.

"Yep. Although they weren't nearly as happy about it as you are. In fact one tried to eat me."

"Look, there are other things that you could do that would help people than waving dangerous objects at people, gaining levels, hurting others," Seymour said, not really noticing the mess he'd made as the fourth wall crumbled al over the hallway. The guards got up to try and clean it up, but they found the more they handled it, the bigger the mess was and gave up.

"I never thought of that," Tidus said, but kept smiling. "Like what?"

"You could spread awareness that not all Al Behd are bad people. You could help rebuild places destroyed by Sin, or at least decorate them a bit. You could give your own money to those who need it more. People who are starving, or homeless. Hell, you could try and solve MY problem for once. If I keel over without a legitimate heir to the throne, there's going to be a civil war in Guadosalam."

"I never thought of that," Tidus said. "You really think I could do all that?"

"With enough effort and good planning and support, of course," Seymour said. "But you're not going to accomplish anything standing around here, now are you?"

"You mean, you, someone of great importance and rank and power and all that thinks some idiot who can barely tie his shoes right on the first try can do good in the world without hitting things on the head?"

"Look, I had to work to get what I have, and if I didn't believe you could, I'd just tell you to shut up, go away, and vote for me."

"Okay," Tidus said, and started walking away.

Seymour closed the door in time to keep more of the falling fourth wall from landing on him.

Suddenly, Tidus paused on his way back to where he was going. "What's vote?"


	3. Chapter 3

Seymour, unlike some very strange people who are amused in very stupid ways, did not sing in the shower. Seymour knew the shower was to get clean, get wet, think, and possibly slip on soap (and he was very good at avoiding the latter).

Seymour realized he had neglected to ask exactly what his father—or whatever it was—had meant by 'spirits' and was even more vague about what he was supposed to do with them. Nearly every time Seymour had a long talk with his father, he ended up going to the family therapist soon afterwards (that is, until the therapist quit and moved away without a forwarding address). The two got on even worse after that.

Seymour decided if someone, metaphysical or not, was going to bug him, he already had enough power to turn Zanarkand into the holiest smoking crater, so these spirits should damn well be doing nothing worse than selling cookies.

"Seymour," he heard a familiar voice say.

Seymour froze. 'That can't be who I think it is.' He thought to himself.

In other universes, people have the politeness to ask someone they had obviously just terrified what was wrong. Not in this one. People in Spira are more obliviously ignorant to manners than a burglar who just stepped on your cat.

Seymour carefully peered out from behind the shower curtain to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. Everyone else believed in the rumors that he was a schizophrenic nutcase who listened to voices no one else could hear, and he was starting to believe it too.

"Oooh, what fluffy towels!" the mystery person, who was more mystery as to why she was there, than who she was, said. Indeed, Yuna stands out quite obviously in a crowd of people who had remembered their hats, but not their pants. She had an amazing ability to wear three times as much as the people who are just unnamed and unmentioned in stories such as this, and yet she showed enough skin to contract melanoma on a tropical island and hypothermia anywhere else that was at least five degrees cooler.

"Give me that!" Seymour yelled, somehow managing to grab the towel and turn off the water at the same time, probably because the water was his own spell, for there is no evidence whatsoever of plumbing in Spira.

"You spirits really need to work on your timing," Seymour complained as he stepped out and wrapped a towel around himself, thus making half the readers abandon the fic before finishing this sentence.

"I hate it when the fourth wall does that," Seymour said, wincing at the mess on the floor. "Always at the silliest times, too."

"I think you're making it worse," Yuna commented.

"What exactly are you of all people doing in my bathroom in the middle of the night? Don't you have someone to annoy a potion out of, or a speech about happiness and puppies and flowers to give to no one in particular?"

"… I lost a bet," she answered.

"Oh." When someone brings up 'bet' its best not to go into details. Same with the phrases 'bright idea,' or 'it's a long story.'

"And now to show you Spira's past," Yuna said started twirling her wand. She dropped it twice and it bashed Seymour in the jaw, reminding him to keep a good distance from sticks and similar objects, but it created the more or less desired effect.

The scenery changed from the bathroom to a beautiful tropical island, thick with foliage that seemed to have been created either by an unimaginative god, or just by one who waited until the last minute and cobbled the project together, using the excuse of it being 'art' to justify its lack of environmental sense. Seymour would have been far more appreciative, were his clothes not left in reality. Or if there wasn't a dog that had taken a great interest in his foot.

"Not bad for a first-timer," Seymour commented.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Yuna asked.

"Well, that tree, there's a bit pixilated—" he was interrupted by the fourth wall falling over yet again, and he decided that since Yuna was the one making the illusion in the first place and she had been rude enough interrupted his shower, she could clean it up this time. "You can't see more than a few yards ahead of you, and my towel seems to have changed color."

Yuna started to pout.

"It's not horrible, I mean, I'm glad I still have the towel in the first place, and my first few times doing this ended up looking like I'd smoke something past it's expiration date. I never was much of a visual artist."

"If you'll please pay attention!" Yuna said.

"Why? I don't really want people to notice me while I'm in a towel."

"They can't see you."

"The dog sure can," Seymour commented. If only the dog would decide exactly what it wanted to do with his foot, instead of sniffing at it for twenty minutes.

"Time and magic have always worked differently for animals," Yuna said. "When you summon an Aeon, people run away screaming. Animals, however, just continue to roll in whatever they found interesting."

"Um, I'm not the smartest of all people about time and stuff, but is this going to cause some sort of disastrous anomaly?"

"Not really," Yuna said. "It's just a dog." She was, however, downright wrong. The dog's notice of Seymour drastically changed the world, not for humans or Guado or Ronso or Al Behd or Chocobos (or any mix thereof), but for the whole of dogdom. But that's not what this story is about, so it will be mentioned that Seymour yelped in surprise as the dog licked his toes, then wandered off, and that shall be all for the mention of the dog hereafter.

"You're not paying attention!" Yuna said.

"Well, you didn't suddenly put your tongue on my feet."

Yuna pretended to ignore him, not letting it show that she actually thought about what he'd said—even less what she thought about thinking about it—twirled her stick again (dropping it once this time), and the scene changed.

The scene was one that Seymour himself had seen before, though it was a long time ago that he'd seen so many details blurred and just plain downright wrong.

"You see, back in the days without summoners—" she was interrupted by a crumbling sound.

"What was that?" Seymour asked.

"That was the fifth wall."

"What's the fifth wall?"

"The fourth wall of the sequel," Yuna answered, barely in time, because the fourth wall came crashing down a her feet. "Gosh darnit."

"Anyway—"

"Yes, yes, Yunalesca this, and Zeon that and Aeons everywhere, whatever. I know all that. I'm the one who taught it to you."

"Oh…right," Yuna said. "Um, lessee, what about my dad, Lord Braska and—"

"I was alive when that happened!"

"Why Al Behd are treated so horribly?"

"I read every book about that one!"

"…"

"There's got to be something in the past that's extremely relevant to all the badness about not being nice—"

"You mean like the impact of bad parenting and poor social environments and how something traumatizing in someone's childhood can lead to personality disorders in the person's adulthood?"

"You're no fun anymore!" Yuna said. She attempted to twirl her stick, hit herself on the head and dropped it on her foot, and Seymour found himself alone in his bathroom, wondering why his towel had changed color for the second time.


	4. Chapter 4

Seymour looked around the bathroom to see if there was anything strange going on with reality. Except for his towel, everything was as he had unwillingly left it.

Seymour reached for the doorknob, which wasn't where he'd left it. "I think I'm going out of my mi —ind!"

After figuring out which way was up, and determining that he had not, in fact, broken his nose on the floor, he pushed himself off what he'd just tripped on and stood up. "See? I don't' remember leaving a little blonde girl in the doorway," he said, making sure his towel was where he'd left it—and indeed it was. The last thing he was going to let happen was to be humiliated in front of his own imagination.

"Excuse me?" she said, tapping him on the shoulder.

"Not now, I'm losing my mind," Seymour said, waving her away. "See?" he asked himself. "Now you're talking to it, that's not a good sign. Well, neither is talking to yourself…"

"Hello!" she shouted, jumping in front of him.

"Shoo, you don't exist," he said, gently nudging her out of his way, even though he really didn't know where he was going.

Rikku glowered. She may not have been the brightest of people in Spira (then again, taking into account the general populace's habit of giving expensive items to random strangers, maybe she was), but she was pretty sure he'd insulted her basic essence within reality, or some such. Still not being the brightest person in Spira (or possibly just someone a bit random and very silly,) she jumped on Seymour's back.

Seymour stopped walking and just stood there.

"Well?" Rikku asked.

"Well, what?" Seymour responded. "If I started screaming at the top of my lungs that there was a scantily clad girl half my age on top of me, everyone would assume I was bragging."

"Well, I proved I exist, at least… right?"

"Well, I'm no existentialist, so I'd have to agree with that."

"Okay!" Rikku said cheerfully and got off his back.

"Are you a spirit, or jut someone who came into my room to take my stuff?" Seymour asked.

"I can't be both?" Rikku asked.

"Wait, I remember you," Seymour said. "You took my wallet. Three times."

"Five—but that's not important, I'm here to show you Spira present."

"Spira present?"

"Yunie showed you Spira past, and I'm here to show you Spira present."

"If I wanted to see that, I'd just open the door!"

"Well, it's more like Spira present not now… not yet. Not yet it's actually twelve hours from now.

"That's Spira future," he said, not really following her logic, but coincidentally wandering in the same general direction.

"Okay, so I'm here to show you Spira Immediate Future, shut up already," she said and started going through her pockets. Seymour noticed that several things she dropped were his and half of them couldn't possibly fit in her pocket, let alone with all the other stuff, but he didn't voice it, lest he break the fourth wall again.

"Here we go," Rikku said, pulling out a rather large machina, whose only purpose must have been to confuse anyone who attempted to figure out what it did just by looking at it to the point of severe migraine.

The scenery changed and Seymour found himself watching Mika saying things that he thought were important to a secretary who was actually writing her grocery list (and that his towel was the same color).

"Um…" Seymour said. "This works just like before, I mean, no one can see me right?"

"I can see you just fine," Rikku said.

"I meant them."

"Of course not. Besides, this isn't real, it's a sphere."

"A big giant sphere?" Seymour asked.

"Yep."

"You mean a big giant sphere of the future?"

"Immediate future."

"How's it work, the future hasn't happened yet?" He winced.

"Oh poopie, you broke the fourth wall."

"I'm pretty good at maintaining the other three," Seymour said, only making the mess bigger. He sighed.

"The fut—the immediate future looks just like every other day. Wait, did I sleep in late?"

"Very late," Rikku said. "Just recently late."

"What's—Who the hell? I'm going to kill whoever killed me!"

Just then, an illusionary Kinoc wandered into the scenery. Usually he had the expression of playing a mental game of Tetris and losing, but now he seemed to have made a satisfactory purchase of a cheat book.

"Oh, that bloody bastard!"

"Figuratively or in actuality?" Rikku asked.

"You rotten piece of scum! First you're fudging the numbers on your own paycheck, now you bump me off! Hey! You borrowed three hundred gil from me too!"

"They can't hear you!"

"Oh. Right."

"As you can see, you gotta watch your head, and what it's on."

"Good advice. Wouldn't it be easier let me go back to my room, panic, and then at least attempt to change all this?"

"Well, I was hoping to enlighten you about the whole mess Spira's in because all the Maesters aren't really paying attention to the problems of the world."

"Hey, I AM a Maest—Well I know about the problems of the world, at least. And I care, that should get me a few points."

"I don't think you're going about things the right way, though."

"Well, it's the best I could come up with without anyone's help!" Seymour said, waving his arms, then began pointing at people in the scene. "Look, Mika's completely senile, but no on really notices, because the only thing he remembers is correct grammar and big words. He thinks the spiders are out to get him, but no one cares because he can make a sentence with the word 'syllogism' in it. Kelk's only a Maester because he's the only Ronso who doesn't clean himself in public… besides yours I mean."

Rikku twisted her foot back and forth and stared at part of the floor, which was suddenly very interesting to her. She didn't say anything.

"…Oh. I didn't know. Sorry. Look, Kinoc's cheating on his wife with that secretary, and she spends the time writing romance novels instead of listening."

"That's so cruel!" Rikku said.

"Not really. Considering all the gibberish Mika says. They're pretty good novels, actually. I've edited a few of them… although there are some parts I'm not really the person to ask—"

"I meant about him cheating on his wife."

"Oh don't worry about that."

"Why not? He's being a big poopiehead!"

"She's cheating on him with the secretary too."

"I'm not sure that really makes things—"

"Technically his wife's ahead. At least she knows the secretary is a guy."

Rikku's eyes went wide and her face went red. Her expression indicated her eyebrows were trying to escape in different directions.

"Miss?" Seymour asked.

"But—" Rikku tried.

"Fooled me too."

"With those--?" Rikku attempted to gesture to her chest, which was in no way a similar shape as the secretary's and she had no idea hoe to get her hands to indicated the right shape either.

"Yep."

"But not even Lulu—"

"Trust me on this one."

"How would you know?"

Seymour sighed. "It's a long story. You know, this could really change the world for the better."

"I really don't see how a transgender secretary that writes romance novels is going to—"

"I meant this sphere! If you can see the immediate future, think of all the good you can accomplish."

"Like what?"

"Like knowing when Sin is coming."

"So you can blow it up?"

"No, so you can evacuate the city."

"But something blows up, right?"

"There's more to machina than just blowing things up… or kicking things."

"What do you know about Machina?"

"I…but… Well, there should be!"

"I never thought of it that way," Rikku said and picked up the machina and left. How, Seymour didn't see. He was too busy collecting the stuff that was his that she'd dropped earlier and getting ready to leave for a hotel (via the window) and in all his rush he failed to notice not just her leaving, but that the mattress went missing as she did.


	5. Chapter 5

It wasn't death that Seymour disliked—he didn't like it either, it was just that every effort to care about it came out a failure—it was death by someone who was such an ass.

Added to that—or possibly the reverse—he'd lost his mind and it had come back to haunt him.

He'd found the sleaziest, meanest, most degrading, most degraded, evilest, slimiest, and most unpopular hotel and then went to stay in somewhere worse. He'd found a place where politics consisted of who wasn't dead, and if that was debatable you hired a summoner (most often resulting in hiring two undead summoners to send each other if you're really uptight about not leaving witnesses.) The only reason someone would know your name in a place like this would be if they already intended to take your ID.

Seymour had a hard time fitting in at first—everyone thought he was too cheery. Halfway through the lobby, he met someone who wanted to change that and had a few large friends, who each had a few larger friends of their own, who in turn had a few friends that you weren't sure what species they were, but it made the ceiling seem to have missed the concept of height entirely. They all had more sharp objects than muscles and they had more muscles than brains. Natural selection didn't favor anyone who fell for most anything because when they fell for it, they didn't get back up.

Shortly afterwards, most of the ceiling was missing, the door had been destroyed beyond any hopes of finding remains, one wall had moved to a different continent (in pieces) and the place had taken on a burnt-to-oblivion theme in the décor. Seymour had helped himself to most of the people's—and whatever's—wallets and the only people standing were Seymour and one man who was bent on making Seymour his friend. Not that there weren't other people in the place, they were just doing things other than standing, such as being in the act of having passed out, running around and waving their arms, fleeing, crouching so as not to be noticed, fleeing, wetting their pants, fleeing, or engaged in being on fire. There would forever be disagreement as to what exactly had happened, but they were all pretty sure they had misheard Seymour when he said 'My pain.'

"Excuse me," Seymour said, leaning over what was left of the front desk after he'd agreed to be good friends with the stranger—whose name turned out to be 'Mary'. There wasn't much to it and it hadn't been involved in his fight at all. There were more sharp objects—and a skull—lodged in it, all from previous fights.

"Is it over?" said the clerk, as he stood up.

"Is it possible to get a room here?" Seymour asked. "I'd like to sleep somewhere less…" A large chunk of thoroughly incinerated plaster fell from the ceiling. "…Lived in."

The clerk handed him a key and explained that you—or your murderer, or your murderer's murderer—paid for your room in the morning and that lodging was free if the Hotel wasn't standing by 12 am the next morning.

Immediately upon entering the room, Seymour discovered the corpse. Or, more precisely, his foot discovered the corpse and his face discovered the floor. Seymour stood up and figured that since the rest of the place was neat and tidy, the removal of rotting carcasses was a job for room service and someone had been a bit too stingy.

Seymour shrugged and slammed the door, utterly unsurprised to have a black-cloaked figure standing behind it.

"I think you're a bit late," Seymour said. "The man's past his prime. Better late than never, though."

"I've come for you, Seymour," the figure said.

"It's always nice to be wanted."

"I am the spirit of Spira future," the figure said.

"Immediate or distant?"

"Not exactly distant, but somewhere a bit far off," she said, and produced a doll wearing a similar black cloak.

She set the doll down and they both did a very impressive dance that involved moving their arms and backs in unison. Seymour had seen people do this before, but the way the figure's very curvy chest moved and bobbed and bounced was what made it worth watching.

They were standing in the middle of a cemetery all of the sudden.

Seymour stood there, waiting for something to happen. The figure stood there, waiting for Seymour to figure out nothing was going to happen and begin asking stupid questions.

"Well?" Seymour finally asked.

"What do you mean 'well?'?" Lulu said angrily, flipping off the hood of her cloak and making the doll jump into her arms.

"It's very nice," he said. "But I pretty much figured it'd end like this—well, something would end like this—well, most things would. Am I supposed to be paying attention to something in particular, or just to enjoy the scenery?"

"How about you go read one of these stones?"

"Any one in particular?"

"How about the big obvious one over there?" she asked.

Seymour bent over and read the inscription on the giant monumental…whatever it was. It had to have been made by someone who majored in art, but never took a class in anything else. It was so large it was sinking into the ground, and the ground was sinking into itself. The epitaph read 'He never gave anyone a raise.'

"It's mine," Seymour said. "I should have figured. Well at least Kinoc didn't get me."

"You don't' seem too terribly worried," Lulu said.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Well, DYING is. To most people."

"Well, when someone comes back to complain, then I'll start trying to think of some alternatives to it. What IS this thing, really?"

"A tombstone."

"No, I mean, what is it supposed to be? A slime-winged octopus bird?"

"It looks like a feliney sea cucumber from here. With a bit of abstractionism thrown in," Lulu commented.

"You know, with all the money they spent on this thing, they could have fixed the schools. Or put it into care for the elderly. Maybe built a hospital and a police station? I certainly don't want it, even if I am dead."

"But you will be," Lulu said.

"Well… Well… Um…"

"Well what?"

"I can't really say 'I'll show them' now can I?"

"Not really. Not ultimately, at least," Lulu said. She waited for her chest to stop moving before continuing. "Got any ideas what you're gonna do?"

"You mean you won't tell me?  
"Hey, I'm just a spirit," Lulu said.

"Well, first I'm gonna get some sleep, I've been up all night and I don't want to do anything until I know I'm in the right mind."

"That could take forever," Lulu said.

Seymour glared at her. She glared back. The doll didn't glare, but might've if it could've.

"You have a sister?" he asked.

"What's wrong with me?" she exclaimed.

"Nothing, I just didn't think someone I'd gotten to know outside of reality would be all that interested."

"You never know," she said, and she and the scene vanished. The corpse, however, was still on the floor.

A piece of paper fluttered down through the air as if it were confused with the specifics of falling. Seymour plucked it out of the air.

"Call me sometime," he heard. He looked around. There was no one but him and the corpse. He wondered what all the numbers on the paper were for and kept it in case it turned out to be important.


	6. Chapter 6

The usual, extremely boring play of routine would have had Seymour awake in the morning. This was not so today.

Today Seymour did not awake in the morning.

He awoke in the mid-afternoon, having been kept up by so many spirits.

This was all unbeknownst to the staff of the hotel and a maid went to go see if he was dead to find out who owed the money for his stay, short though it had been.

The ensuing confusion (this tends to occur so often in Spira that no one counts it as a factor for anything, it being as common as air. However it should be accounted for in this situation because people in Spira do not act the way rational and nearly-rational people in this universe do), arguing, accusations of who was dead and would be and—worst of all—Seymour waking up and realizing the whole experience had not been, in fact, a horrible hallucination brought on by his mind finally breaking his sanity in two caused a not-at-all-out-of-the-ordinary fight in the hotel.

What was out of the ordinary was the fact that one of the participants survived.

No one really took this to mind, mind you, for just after—or possibly just before, memories are sketchy, and some gone—a victor had been decided, the hotel came down.

Before the debris, dust, dangerously huge pieces of building, and bodies had finished falling Seymour had walked off. It wasn't as if there was a reason for him to stick around. Even though he'd slept in, the policy had clearly stated the stay was free if the hotel fell down. He presumed it this rule also applied to it falling up.

Upon returning to The Big Unnamed Building for Maesters (that is actually what it was called), he strolled in, punched Kinoc in the face—Mika thought Seymour was conspiring with the Spiders and Kelk merely wondered why no one had done that before and then got distracted by his own tail—and gave his guards all raises. Not out of generosity, mind you, but because they'd need it after Seymour had Mary teach them all something about clueing in on assassination plans.

Seymour later put out a personals ad with the help of his secretary, who was always inclined to help Seymour, for he was the only person who would use healing spells on her lower back pain instead of just watching her jiggle.

Tidus gave up heroing, which gave the 'monsters' a chance to grow and breed and eat each other in natural peace and restore their numbers and the local ecology. He went on to help the hungry, the poor, the sick, and attempted to help the uneducated, but found they were smarter than he was, and proved that dreams really do come true, so long as they are blonde.

Yuna became a singer, giving the world songs about puppies and flowers and rainbows, and when she felt the need to give a particularly angsty song, lost puppies and flowers and rainbows. No one had the heart to tell her she sucked.

Wakka joined the theatre, because what he really wanted to do was direct, but he wasn't much good at that either.

Rikku tried many, many times to develop a machina that was not meant to be used in battle—a notion that confused the entire Al Behd nation and everyone thought she was loonier than usual. Most blew up, only half were meant to, but she became famous for inventing the first combination bicycle-lawnmower-toaster. It also blew up.

Lulu was still her usual self—which is not very notable—but went on to answer Seymour's personal ad—which is—and the two were later happily married. Afterwards no one feared Seymour more than they would an eggplant, for they were all convinced that—if it didn't eat her in three seconds—Lulu could convince Sin to stop smashing things and do her taxes. This did add moving moogle dolls to Seymour's list of fears, which already had Dark Temples, Desolate Islands, and Cold Places That Resembled Construction Sites on it, but no one other than him cared.

And so a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood (without the squabbling, hair-pulling, tattling, and overall annoyance) swept of Spira, destroying Sin like a tooth from so much sugar.

This, however, lasted two minutes, for someone stepped on someone else's shoe, starting the whole process of clueless suicides, praised martyrs, and plotholes all over again.

The fourth wall was never fully repaired. In the far future, philosophers and scientists both agreed on a theory that it was broken before the beginning of time. Everything else they disagree about and claim the other profession has nothing to do with real life. They are, of course, both wrong, and neither has a sense of humor, an absolute irony for they are both dedicated to the happiness of people in general, but disapprove of its actual practice.


End file.
